The Fellowship of the Ring (Lord of the Rings #1) by J.R.R. Tolkien

Years ago, my husband bought me the full Lord of the Rings series. I read The Hobbit (Book #0) shortly thereafter and it scared me away from the trilogy proper, but I do feel like I'm going to get kicked out of some imagined fantasy book fan club if I don't read these books, so I actually read The Fellowship of the Ring this month. 4

I don't think this will be long because there's nothing I can write about this book that hasn't already been said before. This is more of a record for my own purposes. 

Synopsis: Bilbo Baggins gives his nephew Frodo the Ring, a dangerous and powerful item, and Frodo must leave Hobbiton to somehow destroy the ring. The party is formed and they start tramping off through the woods.

The Good: You can totally see where so many tropes from modern day fantasy began while reading this book. The Dark Lord. The dog named Fang. The squid in the lake. It's remarkable, really.

The Bad: Boy, is this boring.  Their first mission is to get to the elves in Rivendell because the elves might have some history that is unknown to the hobbits. Great. But we don't get there until page 213. Meanwhile, then we spend hundreds more pages tromping through the woods to try to get to Mount Doom in Mordor. Meanwhile, every time the hobbits get into a scrape, someone saves them. The hobbits are useless. There's a lot of walking, putting up camps, and taking down camps. If you think the bit of the last Harry Potter book where the trio are camping in the woods takes a long time, this is not the book for you. Zzzzz.

The Ugly: There are four women who have lines of dialogue in this entire 398-page book. Only one of them speaks more than three sentences. Lobelia speaks a bit, Mrs. Maggot speaks a line or two, Goldberry, lady of the River speaks a tiny bit more, and Lady Galadriel does get to speak actual paragraphs.  Yes, I wrote these down. 

2/5 stars

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Lines of note:

This is not fair to the book proper, but the first sentence of the "Note on the Text" is: The Lord of the Rings is often erroneously called a trilogy, when it is in fact a single novel, consisting of six books plus appendices, sometimes published in three volumes. (ix) 

How did I know that this was written by a man who was going to be very pedantic and boring? (It was Douglas A. Anderson in April 1993)

'Elves seldom give unguarded advice, for advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill.'

Interesting. Do you give advice or do you feel like it's not your place?

He had a strange feeling as the slow gurgling stream slipped by: his old life lay behind in the mists, dark adventure lay in front. He scratched his head, and for a moment had a passing wish that Mr. Frodo could have gone on living quietly at Bag End. (page 97)

There is remarkably little character development in this book, so I noted here that Tolkien actually gave Sam some internal thoughts.

That house was, as Bilbo had long ago reported, 'a perfect house, whether you like food or sleep or story-telling or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all.' Merely to be there was a cure for weariness, fear, and sadness. (page 219)

Man, don't we all wish our own homes were described this way?

'The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.' (page 339)

You can't have the happy without the sad, I guess. 

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Things I looked up:

caracanet (page 228) - a jeweled collar or necklace

mithril (page 229) - a fictional metal found in these books; it was introduced on page 229, but described later on as being stronger and lighter than steel, but resembling silver

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Hat mentions:

He wore a tall pointed blue hat, a long grey cloak, and a silver scarf. (page 24) - This is Gandolf the Grey, yo.

Presently Sam appeared...and he had put on his head a tall shapeless felt bag, which he called a hat. (page 69)

There's a sequence that follows the same hat for a few pages:

...there appeared above the reeds an old battered hat with a tall crown and a long blue feather stuck in the band. (page 117)

He had now no hat and his thick brown hair was crowned with autumn leaves. (page 122)

...and there was Tom's head (hat, feather, and all) framed against the light of the sun...(page 139)

He reappeared, hat first, over the brow of the hill...(page 141)

So great was Frodo's delight at this announcement that Gandalf left the window-sill...took off his hat and bowed. (page 266)